“I want every little girl across our country to know this: You can do anything — even if it has never been done before” said an Aug. 26 X post from the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign. It’s vapid and cliché, the kind of feel-good, self-help-speak that should be avoided during the serious business of electing the leader of the free world. Yet it speaks to an uncomfortable truth for women closely following this campaign.
Kamala Harris is treading new ground as the first female vice president and someone with a serious shot at becoming America’s first female president. You don’t have to be a DEI enthusiast to recognize that the first female president will have a special place in the history books as the culmination of the centuries-long fight for women’s rights in the United States.
That’s also why it’s so awful to have a female presidential candidate who is so obviously not up to the job.
Americans Would Elect a Woman, But This One Isn’t Ready
Surveys suggest Americans are willing, even eager, to vote for female candidates. Harris’ campaign is predicated on this.
Publicly, the campaign hand-wrings about how sexism against women is a formidable obstacle that the trailblazing Kamala must overcome. In a country of nearly 170 million registered voters, undoubtedly at least a few simply won’t vote for any woman. Female candidates’ looks, wardrobe decisions, and personal histories likely are generally subject to greater press scrutiny than that of the average male candidate.
Yet it’s also
